iblog » Alex

BBC Hire Ex-Microsoft Man

Alex — Sun, 20 May 2007 00:29:43 +0000

I posted a few weeks ago about my excitement concerning the BBC’s upcoming release of their Iplayer, which allow licsence fee payers the ability to download programmes up to a week after they are broadcast and keep them on their harddrives for almost a month. It now looks like the BBC have hired a former Microsoft executive to handle their digital rights management for this, the very software that allows users to retain the files for a period of time, but for no longer, and prevents the files being further shared across the P2P networks. Is this a good move for the Beeb? Or will it mean for the kind of consumer lock-in that many users have found detrimental in Microsoft’s Media Player and make the whole service somewhat of a washout?

iStalkr

Alex — Fri, 11 May 2007 22:22:32 +0000

I’ve posted a few times over the last few weeks regarding a whole host of Social Networking webapps. So you’ve got yourself addicted to Twitter-crack, sorted out your Myspace and Facebook, have a Flickr account, keep all your links on Del.icio.us and every song you ever listen to gets posted to last.fm. And never look at a real blog because no one does these days. Its all about the RSS stream via Bloglines or Google Reader. And your books are all at Goodreads or Librarything? Viddler and Youtube? Welly, welly, well. Why not integrate every single one of these services into what the hipsters are calling a Lifestream. Here is some cats lifestream in action. And some other dudes.

Yes, that’s right, allow the rest of the internet to track your every online movement. One service is non-ironically called istalkr. There are a million rival services as well. Worrying? Interesting? Discuss?

Turner Prize 2007

Alex — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:58:15 +0000

The race for the ever mildly controversial Turner Prize 2007 has begun in earnest, check out the four shortlisted artists. I was lucky enough to attend the exhibition last year and found it ranging from the sublime to the trashy. The two most memorable pieces were by Phil Collins whose work examined the effect of reality on the lives of those who appear in it, from around the world and the eventual winner Tomma Abts whose intricate, complex abstract paintings had real presence – tiny, intimate, stunning against the huge white walls. One could look at Tomma’s work for several hours if you wished, but Mark Tichner’s piece was both teenage, superfical and instantly forgettable; ten minutes on Photoshop. Worse still were Rebecca Warrens sculptures which were underworked and dull. The small plexi-glass boxes that lined her room were an actually witty commentary on the whole Turner institution, as people peered into the boxes trying to make sense of essentially an art gag, a collection of rubbish.

This year? Mark Wallinger’s political work seems perfectly timed to eulogise the end of Tony Blair as prime minister and the worrying continuation of his legacy on the streets of Iraq. Nathan Coley’s photography and sculpture ranges from the intriguing (his piece There Will Be No Miracles Here is provocative). Mike Nelson seems to be the artist that will generate the most controversy, in that his installation piece Mirror Infill is a re-creation of a filthy darkroom, and to the uninformed little else. Zarina Bhimji’s photographs are richly melanchol, tranquil and moving. My money is on Wallinger, for his politics, or her for her work’s pure beauty.

Blair Leaves – 27th June 2007

Alex — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:33:39 +0000

Finally, after an exhausting year long bout of rumours, accusations and hearsay, Tony Blair has declared that he will resign on the 27th of June this year. The time has come, ibloggers from around the country and indeed the world – our gentle readers – to assess the legacy of without doubt the most politically successful politician of our generation. Surely, he made terrible policy decision regarding the Iraq War and has continued to make poor decisions concerning the on-going conflict. Yet this man revolutionised the Labour party and was responsible for aiding its complete re-branding, the man who romped home to landslide election victories every time he stood. He is the man who is so significant that the Conservative party is within his thrall sufficiently to attempt to create their own puppet Blairite figure. Yet to gain power, did Labour betray almost every one of it’s founding principles, and finish the job of crushing the unions that Thatcher started through discrediting almost every one of their activities? However, his actions in Northern Ireland have been filled with patience and care, resulting in a final victory for peace over centuries of violence. What of Tony Blair the musician, the family man dealing with a drunken teenage son, with a wife unafraid to enter the public sphere, with a human being whose party that is divided against him and who attracts the hatred of many of those who first brought him to power. Just how much hair has he lost since 1997? Why has he seemingly aged about 30 years in the last ten? How will history judge Anthony Blair? And what of his successor? Comments, as ever, are open.

Blair: Congrats Sark. :-D

Alex — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:53:03 +0000

The politicians invade the interweb saga continues. Anthony Blair has decided to congratulate the recent neo-Thatcherite victor of the French elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, via the medium commonly utilised by emo diaries, YouTube video blogs. What is noticable, from a stylistic perspective, is how stage managed Blair’s videos are in comparison to Cameron’s man-of-the-people act that is geared mostly to semi-bumble and occasionally to weedy concern. Note the evident microphone clip in Blair’s message and the high quality of video, two factors missing from the vast majority of the faux realist Webcameron video posts. Cameron is rarely seen sitting a real chair facing the shop bought web camera, but is always hunched over a busy desk, pouring over a laptop or sitting on a train that he takes pains to note the make of. Blair’s post actually makes Cameron look like he is saying something of substance. It is simply a job lot of pointless back-slapping platitudes. Presidential style – my goodness yes. Watching the Blairite gestures as he repeats the statement in French have a certain surreal quality to them. That said, my weak spoken French seems to think that Blair’s message to the French is slightly different.

Considering the somewhat heated discussion regarding the value of certain forms of French philosophy that occured last week, it would be interesting to see what France’s next wave of public leftist intellectuals make of all this. So, without further ado, for those with French, lets read what philosopher de jour Alain Badiou has to say on the French situation, writing in Le Monde after the Parisian riots. Despite his intriguing philosophical position, lamentably, unlike Derrida’s rather un-thought deconstructive liberalism which is pro-immigration, he remains rather childishly commmited to a Maoist position. That said, his commentary here is worthy.

And as a discussion point (not my personal opinion disclaimer) how about this article, that claims France’s decline has been much exagerated and Sarkozy is very much unneccesary.

Baruch Obama has a twitter page as well as his own social network site and heavy Myspace presence – what is he doing? “Thinking we can cut oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day and take 50 million cars’ worth of pollution off the road by 2020″. Apparently.

Yet More Web 2.0 Time Waste Fun Merchants

Alex — Sun, 06 May 2007 22:50:13 +0000

Twitter is the very latest Web 2.0 social networking waste of time. Essentially, the singular purpose of it is to send via SMS or simply posting, “what you are doing” and thus record in a mundane way ones day to day movements. One can then checkout what ones friends are currently up to, which is probably “sitting around, posting what I am doing to Twitter”. I am so meta sometimes, it hurts.

Slightly less pointless, but still pointless is Good Reads.com which functions much like Last.fm, yet quite obviously for books that you are reading and books that you have read, rather than songs you have listened to. Citeulike is a genuinely useful version of this aimed at academia. Here is my profile as an example.

Pow! Yet more websites to contribute to the time black hole that is Web 2.0. Those revising for exams, consider those exams not revised for anymore.

Humans Can See Into The Future

Alex — Sun, 06 May 2007 22:02:44 +0000

According to an an article in today’s Daily Mail, there may well be “proof” that humans can see into the future. This research is the largest ranging and most scientifically valid research into the paranormal. However, in the examples of 9/11 pre-cognition, for example, it seems that these “predictions” only occur after the fact, a reaction to the event and an attempt to make sense of it, rather than a true prediction. It is certainly interesting.

Despite the fact the article might prove pre-cognition, what is truly great about this article is the fantabulous prose stylings. Classic Daily Mail territory. Thus it reads somewhat like scientific slash fiction:

Professor Dick Bierman sits hunched over his computer in a darkened room. The gentle whirring of machinery can be heard faintly in the background.

He smiles and presses a grubby-looking red button.

In the next room, a patient slips slowly inside a hospital brain scanner. If it wasn’t for the strange smiles and grimaces that flicker across the woman’s face, you could be forgiven for thinking this was just a normal health check.

LOL in general, but in particular to grubby-looking red button. This tendency is not limited to the Mail, Red Orbit adopts a similar style in a similar article:

Deep in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

Goodness knows what is going on here.

BBC Launches On Demand Service Soon

Alex — Sat, 05 May 2007 13:54:52 +0000

In this country there are a few things we can surely be proud of. Many of these are well identified by George Orwell. Our popular music. Tea and fair play. Village cricket. Complaining about the lack of sun or presence of rain. Among these and other things, the place of our television and the BBC in particular is assured. As if to prove my point, the BBC, hot on the heels of Channel 4’s 4OD service, are to launch their own on demand service, where viewers can watch programmes live across the internet or download them for seven days after broadcast. Programmes can then be kept on users’ hard-drives for up to thirty days and are then automatically deleted. Since I regularly miss my weekly Dr Who fix I can’t wait for it’s launch. The player involved with be iPlayer, which the BBC recently successfully trialed and it is likely use their Dirac open source video codec. Eventually, the BBC will open its entire archive for the free download of license payers, which will be great indeed.

I, however, use an Apple Mac. Sadly, I won’t be able to use this service until they port it to other platforms and neither will Linux or other non-Windows users. The same is the case for Channel 4’s service. Worse still, in both cases, the service is tied into the clunky, ugly and bug ridden Microsoft Internet Explorer, the bane of every person who has ever used it. Though this is to prevent copyright issues, I am sure there is a better solution to this problem that tying your software to outmoded technology. In the words of every Points of View complainer “sort it out Auntie!”. For the moment, I’ll have to content myself with their high quality YouTube channel.

Cameron Watch, Again

Alex — Fri, 04 May 2007 18:49:40 +0000

David Cameron’s latest little piece of political opportunism has got the scientific community in a huff and rightly so. Apparently, the lessons of the science curriculum should be flexible, and probably sufficently flexible to include challenges to large-scale scientific consensus during lessons. That’s right: creationism of the intelligent design brand taught alongside evolution.

Once again, this shows the clear reasoning behind the current Tories, a reasoning that mirrors that of New Labour circa 1997. Neo-Liberal Thatcherite with a hatred of society? Join the party! Left-environmentalist with a concern for the lovely ‘ickle animals? We are for you! Country-side Aliance type readying his pack of hounds? Here’s your badge! Wacky fundamentalist, whose opinions have no scientfic, theological (see the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury’s comments) or philosophical basis? Come abroad! Sadly, as the good ship New Labour sinks without trace into the quagmire of Iraq, its new skipper will be doubtless reduced to such obscene popularism. Not that we ever expected any more of him anyway.

Abigail To Have Another Party

Alex — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:50:56 +0000

Abigail’s Party, Mike Leigh’s classic one off 70s comedy drama, is to be remade for the 21st century. Originally produced as a part of the BBC’s ‘Play for Today’ series, it centres around a middleclass dinner party hosted by the outrageous Beverley, who Alan Bennett memorably described as (adopt rambling Northern tone that constantly tends toward qualification) a “brutal hostess”. Throughout the play, the awkwardness, embarassment and plain repression of all the characters is revealed, building to a spectacularly dark climax. Like its successors in the awkward comedy of the The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, the tension throughout is palpable, highly uncomfortable and frequently hilarious.

I can’t help but think this update might run into some trouble. In my experience, dinner parties, certainly those of the horrifically awful kind, are far less common today than they were in the Seventies (not that I was alive in the Seventies). Though the upper middle-classes might still offer to cook up some River Cafe inspired Italian food over the Aga and open an expensive bottle of red, it really seems not be something that everyone aspires to, which is partially what Abigail’s Party so successfully lampoons: people pretending to be something they are not. Any dinner party I have gone to labours under a post-Abigail’s Party irony in any case. For we in the 21st century are constantly under a complex referential irony to our forebears. This all said, here are my top five phrases which will probably appear in the new version.

Property ladder.
Yes, that might be the case, but isn’t it time to give the Tories had another chance? David Cameron is just marvelous.
Yes, The Arctic Monkeys are wonderful aren’t they. I was listening to them yesterday on my iPod on the way to work. They are just so real.
Sebastian used to love the Harry Potter books, but he grew out of them so quickly. He’s such a incredibly gifted child. We have just got him on the waiting list for a marvelous little independent school we are just inside the catchment area of.
This environmental thing is just such a worry isn’t it?

Please, suggest your own.